Flying east this weekend? Check your flight

A major winter storm is poised to hammer the Northeast tonight and Saturday, forecasters warn.

A forecast combining information gleaned by the National Weather Service and AccuWeather projects a strip from Asheville, N.C., to the Washington D.C./Baltimore area to southern New Jersey will get 10 to 20 inches of snow with drifting.

“If that forecast is correct, it will be virtually impossible to travel to this area before Monday at the earliest,” said Mike Smith, chief executive of WeatherData, a Wichita-based subsidiary of AccuWeather, on his blog.

Check the status of your flights if you’re heading east this weekend. They’ll almost certainly be affected in some way.